14 DAY TRIAL // China is believed to have blocked access to the iTunes Movies and iBooks stores sometime last week for a reason that’s yet to be disclosed and that might be an enigma even for Apple itself.
Details are very scarce at the moment, but a report coming from the New York Times reveals that the two services got banned sometime last week at the request of the Chinese State Administration of Press, Publication, Film, and Television.
An Apple spokeswoman has confirmed that the services are no longer available in China and explained that the company is trying to bring both online as soon as possible in the country.
“We hope to make books and movies available again to our customers in China as soon as possible,” she was quoted as saying.
Seeing iTunes Movies and iBooks stores banned in China is a little surprising, given the fact that Apple received the permission to offer them in the country, but this could actually be related to the recent developments involving the Beijing government.
Apple: China wanted our source code
Apple’s General Counsel Bruce Sewell recently revealed that China wanted the Cupertino-based company to provide them with access to iOS source code, but the request was quickly rejected.
“We have been asked by the Chinese government,” Sewell said. “We refused. I want to be very clear on this. We have not provided source code to the Chinese government.”
When asked to comment on these reports, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying also refused to offer any statement, saying that it’s unaware of the case and explaining that it doesn’t really understand what this is all about.
It’s not clear if the banning of the two services is in any way related to this iOS source code request, but this wouldn’t be the first time when China has a rather aggressive stance in the relationship with American tech companies.
In 2014, the Beijing authorities decided to ban Windows 8 on government computers only weeks after Microsoft refused to offer extended Windows XP support to the country. The next month, China also started an antitrust investigation against Microsoft for allegedly violating local competition rules.